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Where are Gordon Ramsay or Robert Irvine when you need them? Sounds like a Kitchen Nightmare episode to me! I can't recall a restaurant experience THAT bad! When you said "initial bill" where you able to get an adjustment?

"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" Emily Webb, Our Townwww.silententry.wordpress.com

I'd say that meal was pretty much a total disaster. And I would be pursuing it socially and loudly. No manager? The alarm bells went off for me then. Someone is in charge, even if it's the head waitperson. The place also has an owner. I'd find him/her and see if they make it right.

As for how much of a restaurant disaster I tolerate, much has to do with the price (higher prices = higher expectations) and the place's willingness to fix things as much as they can. In this case it sounds like there was zero interest in fixing anything, which would make me much less tolerant. Look for the "Closed for Remodeling" sign on their door soon.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

i am really using the app YELP to help me screen restaurants. I can see reviews and very important photographs. One place had a write up that made it sound high end Mexican and we were excited to go. Then I checked the reviews which showed a constant decrease in satisfaction and the photos showed standard plates of ordinary Mexican items. Saved us a bad visit.

We are eating out less and less. Too much Sysco and too few chefs.

I also use Yelp and act accordingly but sometimes when it is 50-50 I back off. I also jump on it after an experience both good and bad.

Watching Gordon Ramsey's show Kitchen Nightmares has turned me off eating out like never before. Some of what he finds in kitchens is approaching puke time. I am also amazed when owners are shown what he finds and they never knew it was happening! WTH? It's your place and you don't look around? Thank God I have never eaten in one of his discoveries. Last, I wonder after he leaves how many of the old habits surface and a year after his departure the place is again a pig sty.

Some of what [Ramsey] finds in kitchens is approaching puke time. I am also amazed when owners are shown what he finds and they never knew it was happening! WTH? It's your place and you don't look around?

Hygiene rules for what's acceptable in home kitchens differ substantially from those for commercial kitchens -- and policies and procedures for restaurant-chain kitchens can be more stringent still. I have cringed (inwardly, I hope) while watching others cook at home using hygiene habits that would never fly in my kitchen, never mind a restaurant kitchen. Fortunately, most of the time breaking the rules does not result in sickness. Still, the rules are there to help eliminate even the chance of sickness.

I'll guess that most restaurant owners are not food-service professionals (or were only a long time ago). They may not even know the rules so the unwholesome situations Ramsey finds won't even register with them. Or the owners may be spread so thin among other kitchens that they don't take the time to look and react. Or they're poor managers and cannot instill in executive chefs or business managers the need to keep things clean. Or they are willing to risk a little in exchange for the monetary gain of non-compliance. Or some of all of the above.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

Yes restaurant kitchens are supposedly regulated and all that, still I'd trust home kitchens more (even not my own), for common sense reasons. If you had to cook all day for a living (and not always much of a living, but fairly low pay too, often around here not even citizens needless to say - so how good do we really imagine they have it) you'd get sick and tired of being careful with hygiene as well, I mean sure you are supposed to but ... all darn day every day and you might get careless with the raw chicken as well in a way a person doesn't when it's not industrial food production. Assuming the actual concern is instances of food poisoning and the like and not just the kitchen being less than sparkling (yea pet contamination or something would also be pretty bad in a hoarders with pets situation).

If you want something to get done, ask a busy person. If you want them to have a nervous breakdown that is.